Unit of observation

Reporting unit

Operationalisation

Survey question (from Community Innovation Survey; list of communication channels from NewGlobal): “During the reference period, did your enterprise co-operate on any of your innovation activities with other enterprises or institutions?
[IF YES] Please indicate in which ways you communicate with these enterprises or institutions when co-operating on innovation activity:

Scheduled face-to-face meetings

Informal face-to-face conversations

Telephone calls

Telephone conferences

e-mail

Lotus Notes, Microsoft Exchange, BSCW or other groupware systems

Special websites for collaboration in a team or project

Video conferencing

Skype or other voice over IP applications

Net-Meeting, Groupboard or other Whiteboard applications

Wikis or knowledge blogs

LinkedIn, Xing or other Web-based platforms for the management of business contacts

Industry-specific online collaboration tools

Complementary indicators

Share of firms involved in online collaboration in other activities (not related to innovation)

Relation to existing indicators

This indicator is not existing yet, but it is related to the indicator on innovation related collaboration in the Community Innovation Survey.
For capturing collaboration activities which are not limited to innovation activities, a different approach is required. The eBusinessW@tch module on collaboration puts the focus on collaboration in the form of ICT-enabled process integration across companies.

Methodological issues concerning application of the indicator

For capturing collaboration activities which are not limited to innovation activities, a different approach is required. The eBusinessW@tch module on collaboration puts the focus on the ICTs employed for process integration across companies. It asks about:

customer relationship management systems,

supply chain management systems,

collaboration with business partners to forecast product demand, to manage capacity or inventories.